A tariff that the Lake Barkley Water Board passed on Monday afternoon would charge local fire departments that don’t report their water usage 0.3 percent of the district’s total water sales for the calendar month.

Terry Goins, director of the Lake Barkley Water Board, said that meant that if the district made $200,000 in a month, a fire department that didn’t report its water usage for that month would owe the district $600.

Goins also said the board was directed by the Kentucky Public Service Commission to pass this tariff as a way of preventing water loss, and continued to say that the PSC is requiring them to pass the tariff.

“[The PSC] said it’s a deficiency that we don’t have it in our tariff that this will be the consequence if a fire department doesn’t report each month how much (water) they use,” Goins said.

Goins added that board members didn’t necessarily want to pass the tariff, as the volunteer fire departments in the county likely won’t be able to afford the tariff; however the PSC won’t allow the board to increase its rates if they don’t pass the tariff.

“I never did want to do that, we’ve got a lot of volunteers up there, and there’s some pretty rough language,” said Goins.

The ordinance requires fire departments to report their monthly water usage, even if they don’t withdraw any water for fire protection or training purposes, and although the tariff is placed on departments that don’t report, they can present evidence of their actual usage.

Fire departments are also charged a penalty for each failure to submit a report in a timely manner. However, the ordinance sent to the board didn’t set a number for the penalty, so they set it at $25.